April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Al Jazeera Satellite Network told
Delaware’s highest court it shouldn’t be forced to make public
the terms of a contract dispute that led AT&T Inc. to bar Al
Jazeera America from its cable distribution system.

A state judge’s decision to order AT&T and Al Jazeera’s
U.S. unit to disclose blacked-out contract terms as part of a
lawsuit challenging the cable ban will put the Qatar-based
broadcaster at risk of “serious economic loss,” an Al Jazeera
lawyer told the Delaware Supreme Court today.

The court is reviewing Delaware Chancery Court rules
governing when companies can withhold details in publicly filed
lawsuits. The ruling may have wide effect given the state’s
status as the corporate home to more than half of the publicly
traded companies in the U.S. and more than three-fifths of
Fortune 500 firms.

Constitutional mandates that court records are presumed to
be public justified the lower-court’s finding that AT&T and Al
Jazeera must disclose details outlining the specific nature of
the dispute, Joel Friedlander, a lawyer for media outlets
including Bloomberg News, told the Supreme Court.

“It’s a substantial dispute that affects the public in a
substantial way,” Friedlander said. “You’re talking about a
new network looking for access to the American market.”

‘Substantially Injured’

Andrew Deutsch, a lawyer for Al Jazeera, said the network
showed that it will be “substantially injured” by disclosure
of the agreement’s details.

“There’s no evidence that the public has any interest in
the terms of this contract,” Deutsch said.

The chancery court is the highest-profile business-litigation forum in the U.S. and rulings go directly to the
state’s Supreme Court for review.

“We didn’t take a position on Al Jazeera’s appeal, and we
were not involved in today’s arguments,” Marty Richter, an AT&T
spokesman, said in an e-mail. “This is Al Jazeera’s issue and
not ours.”

Al Jazeera sued AT&T Inc., the largest U.S. phone company,
in August 2013 over its refusal to carry the broadcaster’s new
U.S. cable-news channel as part of its pay-television service.
Large swaths of the complaint were blacked out as confidential.

Gore’s Network

AT&T’s U-verse pay-TV service said it wouldn’t carry Al
Jazeera America because they couldn’t agree on terms. U-verse
began in 2006 and has 5 million video customers in states such
as Texas and California.

Al Jazeera, controlled by the Qatari royal family, paid
$500 million for Al Gore’s money-losing Current TV and rebranded
it. Buying Gore’s channel gave Al Jazeera America access to
about 43 million U.S. homes, less than half of the nation’s pay-TV households.

Al Jazeera’s U.S. channel has about 800 staff at a dozen
U.S. bureaus and brought in big-name personalities such as
former CNN anchors Soledad O’Brien and Ali Velshi. Programs
include “Real Money” with Velshi and current affairs program
“Consider This” with former CBS News correspondent Antonio
Mora.

Still, the channel must appeal to an American audience that
remembers Al Jazeera as the forum for Osama bin Laden’s video
messages after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11,
2001. Ex-President George W. Bush considered the network
sympathetic to terrorists, and the U.S. government was angered
when Al Jazeera broadcast images of civilian casualties during a
2003 battle in the Iraqi City of Fallujah.

Boycott Fears

In the Delaware case, reporters for Bloomberg News and the
Associated Press, along with a stringer for the New York Times,
challenged the companies’ decision to black out parts of Al
Jazeera’s suit against AT&T.

Delaware Chancery Court Judge Sam Glasscock concluded in
October 2013 that AT&T and Al Jazeera wrongfully kept secret key
terms of the contract dispute and ordered the companies to
release most of the information.

Al Jazeera’s lawyers said in appellate-court filings AT&T
officials admitted they were reluctant to allow the Qatari
broadcaster to join its TV system for fear customers “could
boycott or bring economic pressure against other AT&T services,
such as cellular service.”

The companies said making the data public would give
competitors an advantage. That material also was blacked out in
appellate filings.

Closed Courtroom

To allow the appellate judges to hear arguments about the
confidential details, Supreme Court officials closed the
courtroom to the press and public for the first 20 minutes of
today’s hearing.

In the public session, Deutsch argued that if the Supreme
Court backed Glasscock’s interpretation of the redaction rules,
companies would have few protections for their proprietary
information in Delaware litigation.

“It won’t matter how much harm you suffer if the public
wants to know” the confidential details of the dispute being
litigated, Al Jazeera’s lawyer said.